


sickmas

by carefulren



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Family Feels, Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Sickfic, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:41:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21949726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carefulren/pseuds/carefulren
Summary: The Losers decide to meet up in Derry over Christmas break. Getting sick was not a part of Richie's plan.(prompt fill on tumblr)
Relationships: n/a
Comments: 8
Kudos: 37





	sickmas

_**BEV <3 started a group chat. ** _

_**BEV <3 changed the name to Losers Club.** _

_**BEV <3**\-- WHAT’S UP LOSERS! I’m coming to Derry over Christmas break! Will you all be there? I feel like I haven’t seen you all in YEARS!_

_**Big Bill** \-- I will be. If everyone’s up to it, we can meet at my house? My parents won’t be back until late Christmas day._

_**Ben (is getting kinda hot??)** \-- I was thinking about dropping by for a few days. _

_**Mikey Mike** \-- Yep. _

_**Stan the Man** \-- If everyone else shows up, I can be there. Mini reunion? _

_**Eddie Spaghetti** \-- I, unfortunately, don’t have a choice. Mother’s orders. _

A soft, high-pitched beeping pulls Richie’s focus from his phone to the thermometer he plucks from his mouth. After he woke up feeling questionably sore and heavy, with a headache that could give his hangovers a run for their money, he made a surprisingly adult decision to swing by a drugstore on his way out of the city to pick up some Ibuprofen and a thermometer. 

According to the two-dollar device, he’s sporting an annoying fever of 100 degrees Fahrenheit. He shrugs and dumps two pills into his palm, dry swallowing them with a wince. 

_**Richie is the superior friend** \-- Eddie, did your mom not tell you that she extended a personal invitation to me?_

A low sigh slips past Richie’s lips as he tosses his phone onto the passenger seat and swaps his car into drive. It’s just a small fever, he tells himself. He’ll be fine.

*****

Richie’s drive is a rough blur of chills, random bursts of heat that have him swerving as he tugs uncomfortably at his coat collar, and aches that squeeze at his bones. By the time he pulls into Bill’s driveway, he’s completely exhausted. His head is pounding at the temples, and the chills have picked back up. He turns his car off and drops his head onto his steering wheel, arms wrapped tightly around himself. He musters up a groan as his eyes flutter closed, but a light knock on his window has him shooting up with an impressive string of curses. 

Stan’s peering into his window with a frown and a slight tilt of the head, and Richie smiles and opens his door. His muscles protest when he slips out of his beat up truck, but he smiles through it. 

“Stan the Man,” Richie breathes out. The icy, snowy wind feels like burning needles against his skin, and he can’t suppress the sharp shiver that shoots up his spine to his shoulders. 

“Hey, Richie. You okay? You look pale-- even for you.” 

Richie waves off Stan’s quiet concern. “Long drive after a week filled with little to no sleep and too many finals, but enough about me,” he draws out dramatically. “How are you? How’s the whole math engineering study stuff going?” A strong gust of wind billows past the two, and Richie hisses, crossing his arms tightly around himself. 

“It’s fine,” Stan says with a light laugh before he wraps an arm around Richie’s shoulders. “Let’s get inside.” 

“You’ve always been the smart one,” Richie breathes out through chattering teeth. He leans into Stan’s warmth. “It’s cold as fuck out here.”

Stan hesitates when the two reach the door. His hand hovers in front of the doorbell, and Richie steps away from him with a shrug. 

“Fuck it,” he says, and Stan laughs as Richie opens the door and steps inside, with Stan close behind him. 

They follow the sound of quiet chatter to the living room, where Bill, Eddie, Mike, Ben, and Beverly are sitting around a fire. 

“Richie! Stan!” Beverly’s out of her seat and running toward them before Richie can utter a word. She wraps her arms around both of them, and Richie can’t help but laugh as red curls smack him in the face. 

“Ah, Beverly, you look as beautiful as ever.” 

Beverly pulls away from the two and punches Richie in the shoulder. “Shut up, loser.” Her voice is fond, and Richie smiles and pretends that the punch didn’t hurt way worse than it should have. 

“Come on, “ Beverly tugs Richie’s coat off and hangs it on the rack beside the one Stan is hanging up. “We are swapping Uni war stories.” 

There’s a brief moment where Richie locks his eyes to his long, heavy coat, missing the added warmth it provided. Without it, he’s feeling chilled through, and he crosses his arms and grits his teeth before following Beverly and Stan toward the others. 

The next few minutes pass in a surprisingly awkward exchange of hugs and back pats despite everyone only being separated for a few months. Richie waggles his brows at Ben’s taller, leaner form, grabs at Mike’s beefed up triceps, throws both arms around Bill, and pauses with Eddie. The two share a silent conversation before Richie pulls Eddie into a tight hug. He chases Eddie’s warmth for as long as comfortably possible before Eddie pulls away with a soft smile. 

“So, Richie,” Ben draws out when everyone’s seated once more. “Theater major?” There’s a smugness to Ben’s tone that Richie arches his brows at. 

“It’s my specialty.” 

“Acting?” Mike asks, and Stan scoffs. 

“No, being dramatic.” 

“At least I’m not majoring in creative writing.” Richie deflects, pushing the attention toward Bill only because he can physically feel his face growing hotter by the second, and he’s mentally cursing leaving his thermometer with his bag in the car. He sinks back against the couch, and he can almost hear his muscles sigh in brief relief. He crosses his arms over his chest once more, fingers digging into his arms, and he tries really hard to follow the conversation despite the pain gnawing at his head and bones. 

For what feels like hours, the seven chat about Uni, about fuzzy memories, about how it feels to be back at Derry after... 

Richie smiles when something funny is said, offers input when he finds it necessary, but as the night drags on, his headache worsens. Despite the fire and the heat on, he’s ice cold, and his muscles are painfully stiff from suppressing chills that threaten to take over. He feels like shit, and he’s beginning to think that he can’t even blame this on a rough finals week, not with a spiking fever. 

He doesn’t want to say anything, though. He doesn’t want to ruin this time. It took at least an hour for everyone to get over the initial awkwardness, and he doesn’t want this old feeling of friends to end. 

“You guys should spend the night.” Bill finally says after another hour, and Richie breathes out a low sigh. 

“Wish I could, but I promised my parents I would come home at some point today.” Richie lies with ease.

“That sucks,” Ben says. 

“Will you come back tomorrow?” Bill asks, and Richie nods as he gets to his feet. He has no idea if he will even be able to get out of bed tomorrow, but no one needs to know that right now. If anything, he can just lie to them tomorrow if he’s too sick to pry himself from bed. 

“I’ll walk you out,” Beverly gets to her feet, but Richie waves her off with a wide smile. 

“No way-- it’s way too cold out. I’ll be a-okay, so you guys just carry on.” He manages out a weak accent at that last bit and says his goodbyes before turning quickly on his heel. The longer he’s standing, the less sure he is that he can remain standing. He walks down the hall in long strides, shrugs his coat on, then slips out the door as quickly as he can. 

The wind takes his breath away, and now that he’s away from everyone, he doesn’t bother trying to stop the shivers that begin to uncontrollably wrack his body. He struggles to get his key into the lock, but when he does, he all but throws himself into his truck, anything to get out of the wind. 

His teeth are chattering hard while he reaches a shaking hand around the dark to find the thermometer. He needs to know what he’s potentially dealing with, so he presses the on button and shoves the tip of the device under his tongue. He leans his head back and closes his eyes while he waits. When the thermometer starts beeping, he pries his eyes open, gaze darting toward the door when it opens. 

Eddie’s faster than Richie. He snags the thermometer from Richie’s mouth, and Bill crowds in behind Eddie. 

“103.5 degrees, Richie! What the hell? Stan said you looked a little sick, but this bad?”

Richie winces at Eddie’s shouting. Fuck. “I didn’t want to ruin all of this,” Richie mutters, defeat lacing his tone. Fucking fuck. 

“You’re not r-ruining anything, Richie.” 

Richie frowns at the small stutter, but he doesn’t say anything as Bill steps forward and presses a palm to his cheek. 

“How do you feel?” 

“Terrible,” Richie admits, looking away from the sharp gaze Eddie shoots him. “It’s fine, though,” he starts, reaching for his door handle. “I’ll just go home and sleep this off--” 

“Of you could stay here.” 

Beverly, Mike, Ben, and Stan appear behind Bill and Eddie, and Richie realizes he’s officially outnumbered. 

“I’m probably contagious.”

“Probably,” Eddie spits out. “And with a fever that high, you won’t even make it home.”

Richie wants to argue with that, but Eddie and Bill are working out sleeping arrangements between themselves while Stan and Mike help Richie back out of the car. Beverly grabs his bags, and the seven hurry back into the house. Richie’s uneasy on his feet, but Mike’s gotten stronger thanks to a few years of football, so he’s able to lean most of his weight on Mike. 

“I’m really sorry,” Richie mutters as he’s led into Bill’s room. There are people tugging off his jacket, and someone’s easing him onto the bed while another person is working on his shoes. “I’m really dizzy,” he adds. The room’s spinning, and he’s shaking. 

“Richie?”

There’s a hand on his burning cheek, and he blinks around swimming vision to see Eddie watching him with wide, worried eyes. 

“Have you taken anything for the fever?” 

“A couple of Ibuprofen,” Richie manages. “Before I left for Derry.” 

He doesn’t see who leaves to retrieve more medicine, but soon he’s taken two more pills with blessedly cool water, and he’s being helped under the covers. He can’t stop shaking, no matter how tightly he pulls the covers around him. 

“I’m really cold,” he chatters, teeth clacking together. He feels like complete and utter shit. 

“Just give us one second, okay?” 

Richie hums and presses Bill’s blankets to his heated face. He’s almost drifting off when he feels the bed dipping in different directions. He pries his eyes open to see everyone but Eddie crawling onto the bed. Eddie’s setting up blankets on the floor beside the bed. 

“What are you guys doing?” 

“We will probably all end up sick anyway,” Ben says nonchalantly. 

“Yeah, and we don’t want you to suffer alone.” Beverly adds.

Richie pulls his gaze to see Eddie getting comfortable on the floor. 

“Sorry,” Eddie mutters, and Richie shakes his head. 

“You guys don’t want this-- whatever this is,” Richie mumbles. “It’s the worst.” 

“We’ll be fine,” Bill says. 

After a few moments of adjusting, everyone has a spot that’s comfortable. Richie’s curled around Stan, with Beverly pressed to his back. His leg is close to the edge of the bed, and Eddie’s hand is resting on his ankle. Ben is tucked behind Beverly, and Mike and Bill are both squeezed in behind Stan. It’s a tight fit, but it’s warm, comfortable, and Richie smiles despite feeling like shit. 

“I’ve really missed you guys,” he whispers before drifting off to sleep. 

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Holidays :)


End file.
